Only You May
by Redgirl7
Summary: Victoire and Teddy fic. It's their first day back at Hogwarts and Victoire is stared at constantly. Being part Veela isn't always easy, but Teddy is there to save the day.


**Only You May**

Everyone sat in the common room together, talking and laughing after the first day back at school. Victoire was sitting with the other girls from her dorm in the back of the room near the fireplace and they were discussing their holidays. They could barely hear each other over the noise the rest of the Gryffindors made, but Victoire was happy with the amount of sound, since it meant she couldn't hear the whispers that had followed her through the castle like always happened on the first day back at school. She also knew from experience that it would last for over at least a couple of weeks, so until the first years finally had enough of staring at her, she wouldn't get a rest. Except that the older students then started to look at her. They would stare at her, some looking away when she glared at them, some bold enough to actually approach her to ask her out. She had said no to every single boy who had asked her that question. None knew her well, had ever talked to her before, so it was out of the question that she would date any of them. No, she wanted a boy who liked her because of who she was and what she could do, not because she was part Veela.

'Vic, don't look around, but Mark, that _handsome _guy from sixth year, is staring at you,' Patricia giggled. Victoire rolled her eyes and sighed. She didn't need telling that, she already knew. She could simply feel his eyes burning on her back. However, Patricia was extremely happy just watching his every move, so Victoire let her.

'He's scribbling something down on a bit of parchment,' she commented excitedly. 'He folds it. He puts a spell on it with his wand. He makes it disappear,' she ended her commentary, a bit disappointed at the lack of action.

'Well, I think we know where it is now,' Victoire said dryly when she opened her fist. She showed Patricia the tiny piece of parchment lying on her hand and she gritted her teeth when she slowly unfolded it.

_You're beautiful Vic. Do you want to go out with me on our next Hogsmeade trip? Mark_

'Well, at least he is straightforward,' Victoire mumbled as she finished reading and handed Patricia the note. She eyed her hopefully, but anger started to boil in Victoire. _What was he thinking?_ She took out her wand and mumbled: 'Engorgio'. The piece of parchment swelled up until it was big enough to crumple it into a large ball.

Victoire said: 'I'm going for a walk, see you later,' to Patricia and the others, who had all followed it with interest, and stood up. She searched the room for Mark and when she had located him, she met his gaze, tossed her hair back and smiled attractively at him. He grinned at his mates when she walked in his direction, still not breaking eye contact. When she got near enough, the smile disappeared abruptly and she threw the ball of parchment hard against his head.

'No. And don't call me Vic,' she told him coolly, glaring at him. Then she left, seething. She slammed the portrait of the Fat Lady open, who yelled after her that she'd not let her in again, but Victoire couldn't care.

First, there was complete silence, then the room burst out laughing and talking again, discussing Victoire and laughing at Mark. However, Teddy, who was one of Mark's friends, didn't laugh. He hadn't seen Mark writing a note to Victoire or he would have told him to stop it, so it was a surprise to him when she walked over after Mark had told him what he had done. He knew how she would react, so inwardly, he had smiled when Victoire had thrown the parchment against Mark's head. It was exactly what he deserved. However, Teddy had to admit that when she had tossed her hair back and smiled at Mark, his breath stocked as well, before realising that this was _Victoire _he was thinking about. His cousin. They used to be inseparable when they were little, but that changed when Teddy went to Hogwarts. He couldn't quite tell how that had happened, but somehow he had stop to see her as a friend, someone to play with and talk to and started to look at her as just one of his many cousins. Only, he couldn't even help but think that he quite missed talking to her. So, apart from having a feeling he had to make it up to her a bit (he had stared at her too) he felt sorry for her.

Teddy quickly scanned the room and saw Victoire's friend, Patricia looking around nervously trying to decide what to do. Teddy saved her the trouble when he went over.

'You stay here. I'll go looking for her.' And after patting Mark sympathetically on the back, he left the common room to follow Victoire.

Feeling absolutely livid, Victoire stormed through the castle towards the secret passageway on the sixth floor. There weren't a lot of people who knew about it, apart from her family, so the chances were slim she was going to be disturbed here.

She slipped behind the tapestry and sank down on the stone steps in the back of the room. They led all the way to the dungeon, but Victoire had no intention of going there, she just needed to be left alone for a while. She had just lit her wand when she could hear someone in the corridor next to her. She whispered: 'Nox' and pointed her wand at the tapestry, listening intently. It could be Filch, although normally, she could hear him breathe loudly. She couldn't hear anything except for the footsteps, so it wasn't him then. She relaxed slightly, trusting on the obscurity of the place when suddenly the tapestry was pushed aside, but before she was able to even lift her wand to fire a spell, it flew from her hand and into the awaiting hand of a grinning Teddy.

'No need to curse me now, is there?' he asked her and handed a perplexed Victoire her wand back, which she accepted.

'What are you doing here,' she hissed after she got over the shock. He leaned casually against the wall, muttering a spell so the small passage they sat in was dimly lit.

'I saw your act in the common room, so I thought I would come and find you to see you weren't going to do something stupid on your first day back at school.' He smiled at her, but she glared angrily at him.

'Perhaps,' she said through gritted teeth, 'you can tell your _friends_ to stop sending me stupid notes to ask me out. Perhaps,' she continued, starting to yell now, 'you can stop all those stupid first years staring at me or stop everyone calling me beautiful! I don't want people to tell me how beautiful I am! I've heard that enough now. Why can't they say I am clever or brave or friendly? Why does it always have to be beautiful?'

Victoire now turned and rounded furiously on Teddy, who was still leaning against the wall as though nothing had happened. He had learnt by now to let Victoire rage, interrupting her was never a good idea.

'Do _you_ think I'm beautiful?' she demanded. Teddy looked at her and when he saw her eyes almost blaze fire, the corners of his mouth twitched.

'No,' he answered calmly.

'You too!' Victoire screamed, 'I wish people would…' she stopped. 'What? You don't think I'm beautiful?' Victoire said, much softer than moments before. She looked down to her shoes and Teddy could barely refrain from laughing out loud.

'No, but I do think you're clever and brave and friendly and a lot of other thing people never say to you.' It took Victoire a moment to pull herself together and to fully understand what he had said, when she heard Teddy burst out laughing. She looked up and saw him clutching his stomach and bending forward, shaking from laughter. She stared at him for a moment, then joined in.

'You bastard,' Victoire told him and pushed him over. Teddy rolled over the floor; still laughing so hard tears were now streaming down his cheeks.

'You…should have…seen your face,' he managed to say between his fits of laughter. 'Priceless!'

'All right, all right, enough now. I get the message. Ted?' she then said softly, which made Teddy stop laughing and look up at her. 'Can we talk? I mean, really talk. I haven't spoken to you in ages, just a casual greeting.' Teddy sat up straight and hosted himself over to sit beside her on the stone steps.

'Sure. Do you want to do the talking or shall I…?' he said, and he was happy to see at least a hint of a smile on Victoire's face.

'I'll do the talking.' She was silent then to the point where Teddy thought she wasn't going to speak at all. Victoire was gathering her thoughts, considering what to ask first. 'Do you really think I'm not beautiful?' she blurted out, although that certainly wasn't the question she had wanted to ask. 'Forget it, different question,' she hasted to say, but he shushed her.

'Yes, I think you are beautiful, but you would probably have hexed me when I said it, so it seemed wise to say no. But I do think you are beautiful. Would I like you as much if you weren't? Yes, because we are family. We,' he hesitated only for a very short moment, where he thought about the fact he couldn't call Victoire his friend anymore. It was true what she had said; they had barely spoken a word to each other. But, when he saw her sitting on the stairs like that, listening intently, waiting patiently for him to finish, he knew he wanted to be friends again. He wanted to know Victoire, really know her and he would be doing his utmost to try and restore their bond again. 'We are friends. So even if you looked like a troll, I'd still like you as much as I do now.'

Victoire looked at him. 'Honestly?'

'Honestly. Any other questions?'

'Yes. What do you think I can do about all the staring and stuff? This is now my fourth year and it's been going on for three whole years now. I don't want my last four years to be the same. I want to enjoy it too. Now, when I walk through the castle, the only thing I do is check if no one is watching me.'

'You really do that?' he asked, amazed; he had never known that.

'Yes. Last year, I even refused to go down to the Quidditch pitch to see the final. I was in the library instead, finally enjoying some peace and rest. It was just me and madam Pince together. She let me be as long as I treated the books with respect.' Teddy gaped at her, but he didn't know what to say, so he stayed silent for a while, thinking hard for a solution.

'Why don't you talk to your mum? She had to deal with all of this as well, didn't she?' Teddy proposed.

'I definitely will. And in the meantime, I'm going to hex everybody who tries to ask me out.' Teddy laughed, got up and stretched out his hand for Victoire to take. He pulled her up said: 'Victoire Weasley, you're so brave and clever and friendly. Do you want to go to Hogsmeade with me? That will stop at least for now the guys from asking you.'

'You'd do that? That will give me at least a couple of weeks' peace. Thank you.'

'That's what family is for, isn't it?' Teddy said and then added, 'I've missed you, Vic. We used to be such good mates. Why aren't we now?'

Victoire lowered her head slightly. 'I don't know. You stopped writing after a while, I didn't write as well and when you came back after being away for a whole year, you weren't the same. I didn't feel comfortable around you anymore like I used to.'

'Oh,' Teddy said, 'I never knew that. I noticed you kept your distance, but I never knew that had something to do with me. I just thought you were being, I don't know, busy.' Victoire laughed.

'That's certainly a way to describe it, yes. I'd say distant, but if you want to call it busy, then that's fine with me.' Teddy chuckled.

'Start again then? See the Hogsmeade trip as a compensation for my ignorance then?' Victoire nodded and together they walked up towards the common room.

'You left quite an impression in here by the way,' Teddy told her when they stopped in front of the Fat Lady, who hadn't forgotten about Victoire's rudeness earlier that evening. 'I don't think he will ask a girl out for a while, being turned down by a girl like that is quite hard to take, trust me.'

'Suits him right,' Victoire replied, but she smiled. 'Ted,' she said, desperate to speak her mind. 'Do you really think I'm beautiful?' Teddy smiled, but answered her honestly.

'Yes, I do. But if I told you you weren't, would you hex me?' She shook her head.

'Probably not. I think you are the only person in here who is allowed to call me beautiful _or_ ugly. I don't think I care which one you pick, as long as you promise me one thing.'

'And that is?' Teddy said, weary of what might come.

'Never, ever, just leave me be when I'm _busy_, alright?'


End file.
